


Said the Spider to the Fly

by CateyedCrow



Category: Cain Saga and Godchild
Genre: Banter, Frenemies with Benefits, Hand Jobs, M/M, Master & Servant, Oral Sex, Smoking, Victorian Attitudes, stupid sexy crehador
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 15:45:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16956843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CateyedCrow/pseuds/CateyedCrow
Summary: Cain Hargreaves has been paying for advice from Dominic Crehador, no matter how suspicious and superstitious he might be. Sometimes, when dealing with adversaries who delight in playing with the supernatural, having a charlatan (but a knowledgeable charlatan) on one's side can be to one's advantage.But Crehador feels that he has been put at bodily risk in these battles between father and son. And as such, payments in coin may not suffice. Instead, payment for bodily risk ought to be done bodily: in flesh.





	Said the Spider to the Fly

**Author's Note:**

> For an old RP friend, with love and squalor and flip-flops. Sade, dis-moi: Qu'est-ce que tu vas chercher?
> 
> An interesting fact: an old slang term for condoms in French is “capote anglaise,” or “English coat,” whereas a 19th century slang for them in English was “French letters.” If that tells you anything about British/French relations.

 

“So you came alone? All by yourself? How very grown-up we are, Lord Cain.”

Cain Hargreaves, earl, and bearer of all such titles as had been inherited by him from his father and his grandfather and so on through history and antiquity in that great and peculiar line did not deem these remarks as worthy of a response.

He took off his coat and he took off his hat and put them on a brass hook near the door of the flat where they hung next to an embroidered silk scarf and a mass of black velvet (which was, in all honesty, probably a cape). The walls were fiercely red and patterned with gold lattices and arabesques.

“And you didn’t stammer or shy away when you told the driver the address or handed him his shilling?”

This voice came from the room beyond this small entrance hall with its clutter of cloaks and scarves, a blue porcelain ginger jar next to a silver tray on a battered table, a tarnished mirror with a gilded frame on the wall, a tattered Persian carpet atop the tiled floor. Cain pressed through the tasseled curtains hung in the doorway, past a pair of ferns on plinths and a palm in a brass pot. The air was thick with the smoke of foreign incense, spiced cigarettes, and likely opium. Likely. No fire burned in the grate, but the room felt heavy and warm. The curtains at the windows--more heavy brocade and tassels--were drawn against the afternoon.

His host--who couldn’t even be bothered to open the door himself and certainly kept no servants to do so, had rather simply called out to him in the hall--was, he saw now, pouring cold water into a dose of absinthe and watching the brightness fade into that sweet and milky green.

“Are you quite finished?” Cain asked.

“I am never finished,” Crehador answered, watching each droplet of water slide over the sugar he had balanced over his glass, watching the absinthe pale to green moonlight, watching the level in the glass rise and the sugar above it shrink.

He was hunched in a faded and slightly threadbare mauve velvet armchair over a low table with a bottle of absinthe and a saucer of sugar cubes. The silver pitcher of water he held and water beaded on its sides and dripped onto the table. There were stains and burns enough already atop that table; another would hardly be noticeable. A pity, though, since the table seemed an import from China--or it was at least in that style; one could forever question the authenticity of anything and everything in such a room as this. Pillows and cushions with all their tassels, cords, embroidery, and mirrors littered the floor and bunched in the corners. A chaise lounge that would have better suited Versailles, gilded lion’s feet and all, stood to one side (Frenchmen and their tastes). Another mauve armchair stood across the table. Cain chose the armchair and leaned against its high back for a moment.

“It was quite the turn of events, Mr. Crehador. After all, this time,  _ you  _ sent for me.”

There was silence for a moment, only the sound of water dripping into the glass, melted sugar sliding thickly through the slotted spoon. Crehador was barefoot again (or perhaps as usual, though a pair of slippers with curled toes were tumbled on the floor nearby) and dressed in trousers and a striped tunic with every button at the neck left undone.

“I did.” Content at last with his dose of absinthe, Crehador set the pitcher down. “It is in reference to--shall we say, your generosity in thanks for my assistance.” A sip of the glass. He smiled.

“You know I’d be true to my word.”

“I had hoped you would be. But--” a languid shrug “--in these days, one must be so careful. You are in my debt and I should hate for that debt to go unpaid.”

“I have your payment with me.”

His hands held open and out before him as if in piety or blessing Crehador went on: “Your generosity has kept a roof over my head and bread on my table.”

Cain at last dropped himself into the chair opposite. “It’s kept the wine flowing and sent you into your favorite houses of ill repute, you mean.”

“It is a feast of flesh, Lord Cain.” Crehador’s accent became more pronounced with drink--or perhaps he was playing it up, the strange foreigner in staid London.

“For man cannot live on bread alone,” Cain answered, looking askance at the walls around them. Hideous wallpaper: ostentatious, purple, and florid.

Crehador raised his glass in agreement. “Truly; wise words.”

Cain settled back into the chair. “I’m surprised you’d want to go to a brothel. Doesn’t your own flat seem enough like one?”

“How would you even know?” Crehador snapped. “But nevermind. My home is designed in the Oriental style. Persian rugs, Chinese furniture, Japanese screens...” He pointed with the dripping slotted spoon from his glass.

A garish print of  _ La Grande Odalisque _ gazed at them with dark and smoldering eyes from the wall. The paint on the frame was chipped.

“The finest opium, and a Turkish corner,” Cain said, nodding to the curtained alcove and its mass of pillows in the far corner of the room.

Crehador cast it a glance himself and then turned back to Cain. “Don’t begrudge me. I deserve a few pleasures in life. Besides, one simply must dress the part.” He drained his glass.

“Is that how you see it? That you have a part to play?”

“There are roles a man finds himself taking on, Lord Cain. Don’t ask me so many questions. I’m not in the mood for it. I shall always know more of you than you could ever know of me.”

And Cain remembered the morning on the terraces and in the gardens of the Cromwell House, with Crehador parading about with a cockatoo on his shoulder (snatched from some cage somewhere in the house, no doubt). But more and worse, and seared into Cain’s memory, was that lunge, and his hand pressed against Cain’s forehead and his sudden unstoppable dive into Cain’s memory. And so this memory was seared in twice: the memory of it happening and all the memories dredged up by it. 

Cain shook away the thought of it.

Crehador poured the absinthe for himself again. “I’m almost surprised you’re not scolding me for taking a second dose.”

Cain shrugged. “ _ Sola dosis facit venenum _ .”

“You and your private tutors again,” Crehador sneered, setting the spoon and sugar atop the glass.

“I read Paracelsus without them. They wouldn’t have bothered.”

“You are insufferable.”

“So I’m told.”

Crehador poured out the water and the green in the glass turned pale and milky again. The scent of herbs and anise bloomed around them.

“You don’t take much water in it,” Cain said, watching.

“If it weren’t considered so  _ gauche _ , I would drink it, ah, ‘neat’,” Crehador answered, only looking up as he raised the glass to drink.

Cain took an envelope from the inner pocket of his jacket and laid it on the table between them. Crehador set down his glass and took up the envelope.

“It should be as we agreed,” Cain said.

“And it is,” Crehador said, studying the wrapped packet of bills inside. “But Lord Cain, please, you must understand: you are  _ significantly _ in my debt.”

Cain scoffed. “I’ve paid you every penny you’ve demanded. And you’ve demanded more than you had right to demand.”

“Still, you paid.” He laid the envelope back on the table again.

“I was in need of your help. You know full well who and what I--what  _ we _ are standing against.”

“If you could  _ only _ learn to think superstitiously when dealing with superstitious people, you wouldn’t need me.” Crehador slouched in his chair, draping his leg across the arm and settling into the cushions. “But, no: that’s not in your nature. Or at least not in your upbringing--somewhat surprisingly.” He smiled and swung his dangling leg. “But you’re still in tremendous need of me. You occupy so much of my time, my energy, my thoughts--it goes far beyond the mere consultations you’ve sought with me.”

Cain leaned back in his chair, smiling, lacing his fingers together, a kind of insouciance. In such a gesture, in such a moment, he was, indeed, his father’s son, the youthful shade of a great nightmare. He spoke: “If I withdraw my patronage, what will you do?”

Crehador sighed. “You won’t.”

“You’ll have to do without so much. Your finery, your evenings about town--” Cain gestured to the empty glass on the table between them “--your absinthe.”

“You are still in my debt.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You, little lordling, have put me in very great and very real danger on more than one occasion. Yes, more than once I have been put bodily at risk. By you. And I know far too much about the goings-on in the Hargreaves house.  _ Far  _ too much.“

“Are you threatening me with blackmail?”

Now Crehador scoffed and laughed. “You don’t have a reputation pure enough to ruin with blackmail, Lord Cain.”

The air in the room suddenly seemed thicker. “You Frenchmen never come to the point. So what are you threatening?”

Crehador draped a hand across his forehead and peered at Cain through his fingers. “I dislike being put bodily at risk. The body is the seat of pleasure, the home of the senses. To lose that--it would be a tragedy.”

“So says the man who claims he can speak with disembodied ghosts.”

He sat up with a start: “The ghostly dead suffer. Did you know? They suffer because they are dead, because they cannot feel pleasure again. They have no body with which to feel it. Their body rots and yet they remain. They can only recall the pleasures of the body, and only dimly, and long for it again, for eternity.”

Cain gave him a disbelieving sidelong look from under his brows.

Crehador sat up, leaning over the table with his elbows on his knees, and went on: “A great philosopher said, ‘it is only by exploring and enlarging the sphere of his tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life’.” He waved his hand dismissively. “A loose translation, but you wrong me by putting me bodily at such risk.”

“And in bringing danger to your door, you say that I am in your debt.”

“I have nearly paid the ultimate price. I have not, nor have you--fortunately for us both and for all  _ you _ hope you accomplish. But it puts you in debt,  _ n’est pas _ ? Will you pay that debt?”

Cain swallowed hard. “How?”

Crehador smiled, white and gleaming, a wolf’s teeth in the dim light of the room. “In flesh.”

Now Cain laughed. “Are you a vampire now? Or a cannibal? Do you intend to bleed me? You’ll not be able to pay for your wine or your women with a jar of blood, you know.” He rose to leave. “I didn’t come to trade witticisms. Save them for your companions in the evenings.”

Crehador had not moved. He sat still, leaning over the table with the empty glass and the nigh-empty bottle before him, his hands folded under his chin, patient. “Lord Cain, I am being literal--”

Cain turned, leaning against the wing of the armchair again. “That’s the quibble of  _ The Merchant of Venice _ , isn’t it? To take flesh without blood.”

“--But not so literal as you think.”

Crehador rose, then, stepping barefoot and silently across the Persian carpets, treading on trellises and flowers and fantastic beasts, over to the other armchair. Closer now (too close), Cain could catch the scent of absinthe, yes, but cloves as well and the spicy musk of incense.  _ He probably burns it at all hours to keep out the stench from the streets in this quarter _ . But it wasn’t the scent of frankincense that would linger in empty churches; rather, this was something dark, something sweet, and something heavy--this was the smell of ruined temples and the remnants of ritual. Cain held his gaze.

“I warned you about Duke Gladstone, didn’t I?” Crehador said, low and close, “I told you he loved beautiful things--whether a piece of artwork. Or a man. He’s hardly the only one.”

A moment’s silence hung between them.

“Flesh,” Cain said.

He was too quick, even with two doses of absinthe down his throat: in an instant, Crehador had Cain’s right wrist in the grip of one hand and a handful of hair from the back of his head in the other.

With his face pressed beneath Cain’s jaw he whispered: “You begin to understand.”

“Libertine,” Cain said, twisting against his hold.

“I would be careful making those kinds of accusations--especially if I were a young man with a reputation like yours.”

“My  _ reputation _ ,” Cain said, still twisting and pulling against Crehador’s grip but unable to get free, “hardly includes this sort of afternoon tryst.”

“Don’t act so demure. I know about you and that servant of yours. It’s no secret to me.” 

No--and of course it wouldn’t be, not by now. It had always been there, lying below and behind the usual propriety, even long before the first stronger touch, the first unspoken words; long before cool sheets and fingertips like fire. That monstrous view Crehador had had of Cain’s mind--it would have been there, even then. 

He went on: “And if you would like it to remain a secret between we  _ three _ , then--” 

He gave a tug and Cain was forced to take one step nearer to him. “I’ll only keep you for the afternoon. You’ll be back on your way well before you’re expected anywhere this evening. And we shall consider your debt repaid.  _ D’accord _ ?”

Cain grew still. In all fairness, the prospect of an afternoon such as this, the prospect of an encounter like this was intriguing: enemy turned ally turned--what exactly? If he was an ally at all. But this  _ meant  _ nothing: this was payment (if Crehador was to be believed; a fraught notion at best). This was a kind of fascination from each and both, from the glimpses they had had each of the other; a kind of hypnosis, a kind of want unattached to anything more, a kind of curiosity, a variation on a theme (the lady, and a visit in her bed for the night). How different was this from that? Not so different. And yet, entirely different The prospect of it was intriguing--overwhelmingly  _ intriguing _ . Cain swallowed hard; already his breath was coming faster.

“Very well.” 

And with that Crehador set his teeth softly against Cain’s throat.

Such a small gesture and yet the sense of it rushed through Cain’s body more like electricity, straight to the core of him, stiffening his spine, forcing his eyes shut. His free hand reached, grabbed, found, and held the open collar of Crehador’s tunic.

Crehador laughed, low. “A boy like you  _ would  _ like that sort of thing--a good sharp bite or a lover’s mark left behind.”

“Not so much as you might think.”

“No.” Crehador said slowly, looking up at Cain’s face (eyes closed, brows almost furrowed). “Perhaps you wouldn’t after all.”

No second bite this time. Rather, a soft and sudden swipe of his tongue along Cain’s neck to just behind his ear, then a kiss. Cain’s breath caught and he swallowed hard again.

Crehador pulled at him, leading him across the dark little flat, their steps soft on layers of carpets, towards the mound of pillows in an alcove secreted behind a pair of curtains. His bare feet sought the way between chairs and ottomans, pillows and candlesticks, abandoned slippers and books.

“Come, come. We shall have  _ une petite dégringolade _ . A little tumble. Yes?”

Crehador had let go from Cain’s hair, but now held him about the waist. Now, almost like a pair of dancers, they were gliding slowly across the room, step by step. But that grip about his waist was insistent, demanding, a vice.

“You make me feel like a creature caught in a snare.”

“A snare?” Crehador drew out Cain’s arm by the hand he still held and brought it close between them. “A snare. Surely I cannot be the only one who has longed to see these fine wrists of yours bound by ribbon or silk cords.” He kissed Cain’s wrist. “A snare.”

Cain looked up at him through his eyelashes (long, black, casting their own fine shadows on his face). “I would have expected you to be more adept at a seduction.”

“Are you not seduced?”

“I told you: I agreed to your demands and now I feel like a creature in a snare.” Now Cain found and held his gaze, smiling softly. “So I’ll challenge you: seduce me.”

Crehador looked askance for a moment; Cain’s smile neither faded nor flickered. Cain pulled himself loose at last from Crehador’s grasp. Crehador stood with his hands open and empty.

“What would you have me do?” Crehador asked. “Would you have me call you beautiful? Is it flattery you want? Shall I call you dark and strange?” He reached toward Cain again, but with softer hands. “Shall I tell you your eyes shine like a cat’s in the dark?” He caressed his face gently, his hands slipping softly through Cain’s dark hair, down his neck, touching his lips with his thumb, passing his hands across his shoulders. 

Now the blood was rising in Cain’s face and he glanced at Crehador’s hands. Crehador, letting a little desire play on his face, slipped one hand back up to the nape of Cain’s neck. Cain let his gaze drop aside for a moment as another shiver passed over him. Crehador drew him in closer, let him feel warmth and breath and perhaps want, and Cain set his hands against his chest, plucking a little at the striped tunic. With his free hand, Crehador gently loosed Cain’s tie and deftly undid the button of his shirt collar. Cain’s mouth opened softly and, again, Crehador pulled him closer and pressed his lips, his open mouth, against the skin of his neck.

Much better this time. Cain, warming, gripped at his back, at his shoulder blades, at his neck now. He stretched, reaching to catch Crehador’s ear in his teeth. He whispered, hot and low:

“Touch me again like you did that morning at Cromwell House, and I will bite off your ear.”

Crehador pulled away in an instant, taking two steps back and seething. Cain still stood there before him, smiling, his face rosy, his hair a little mussed, his collar open, a little déshabillé all over, looking at him with both desire and demands. He stepped forward to close the space between them, looking up at Crehador’s face with burning eyes.

“Come,” he said, his hands at Crehador’s hips, “Shall we have that little tumble?”

Something broke or something was kindled in that moment. The fire caught. It burned. Crehador caught Cain again around the waist and by the nape of his neck and pressed their lips together. Cain caught him with a hand pressed to either side of his face and closed his eyes. Crehador’s thumb drew at his chin, urging his mouth open: Cain obliged and let him have that first penetration, his tongue drawn slowly against the inside of Cain’s cheek. He tasted of cloves, he tasted of bitterness, he tasted of anise, he tasted of sugar. Another shiver stiffened Cain’s spine and knotted his muscles down to his very center. So locked together, they covered the last few steps to the cushioned alcove.

Cain broke the kiss first, panting, but still holding him.

How much would he want? How much would he demand? How far would this go? What amount of flesh would suffice in payment? And what kind? And yet, even as he asked these questions of himself, in that moment, Cain was willing to go quite far and to give a fair amount of flesh. After all: the prospect was intriguing. 

“Take off your jacket. And your waistcoat.”

“Such a demand.” 

But Cain did as asked (ordered, more like), but slowly: first one shoulder, sliding his jacket down slowly, shaking it lower, drawing his arm back through the sleeve. Then the other side: shrugging it down, slipping his hand back through the sleeve. He folded it but tossed it aside.

“You’re so deft with your hands, with cards and coins, perhaps you ought to undo these,” Cain said, reaching for Crehador’s hands and setting them on the top button of his waistcoat.

“I should rip them off,” he said.

“And make Riff sew them all back on tonight? How unkind, Crehador. I have him working hard enough. He deserves his rest.” 

They watched each other’s faces, then, as their hands, together, pushed each button back through each buttonhole. Cain gave a soft sigh as though in relief as the last button came loose. And who was seducing whom?

The waistcoat hanging free now, Crehador stepped back and sat on the rug in the midst of a pile of pillows in the alcove--though it was more at draped than sat--settling himself back among the riot of patterns, embroideries, tapestries, tassels, and cords, and watched.

As slowly as before, Cain shook his waistcoat from his shoulders, let it fall to the crooks of his arms, and then let it drop softly to the floor. 

Now stripped to his shirtsleeves, he crept into the alcove, kneeling just aside Crehador’s knees to bring their faces together. 

“And will you help me with these buttons too?” he whispered in that dim and muffled space.

Crehador laughed, rubbing his face with the back of one hand. “You aristocrats. You can hardly dress yourselves, and you can’t at all undress yourselves.”

And Cain feigned a petulant sulk.

“Come here,” Crehador said, beckoning.

Cain slipped further into the shadows behind the curtain and propped himself back against a cushion. Crehador reached for his tie again; Cain let his head fall gently back against the cushion, his eyes half-closed. A brass lantern or an incense censer hung from the ceiling in the center of the tapestry tent made by the brocade curtains, the insides of which were lined in watered silk (though slightly threadbare or moth-eaten, as was everything in this flat--grandiose enough, but at least secondhand, if not thirdhand).

Crehador’s long fingers worked at the knot in Cain’s tie.

“And it was so carefully tied. I’m going to ruin all of your Riffael’s careful work, aren’t I?” Crehador said with a mocking pout.

Cain gave a wicked smile. “I ruin it myself easily enough every day.”

“The patience of a saint, that man.”

“More patience even than that,” Cain said, gloating.

Crehador whipped the tie from around Cain’s neck with a snap, very much like the crack of a whip, and tossed it aside.

“Take off your shoes,” he said. “I won’t have them in here.”

Cain’s feet still lay just outside the curtains. “What, here in your  _ sanctus sanctorum _ of debauchery?”

“If I liked them better, I would let you keep them on. But I don’t. You’ve walked through everything in the street; it’s foul. If you were wearing high buttoned boots with a sharp heel and a pair of silk stockings, you could leave them on. But you aren’t. So take them off.”

With a sigh, Cain bent to his feet, untied the laces of each shoe, rolled down each sock, and kicked them all aside. 

“Are you quite content now?”

“You would look very well in sharp-heeled boots and silk stockings.”

“Perhaps I should wear some sometime.”

“Perhaps I should send for you again when you do.”

“That rather depends on what Riff thinks of such an ensemble. He might not even let me leave the house.” Cain was grinning again, looking sidelong at Crehador. It might not even be for the sake of modesty, decency, or propriety that Riff would keep him hidden away in the house, were he dressed so. But that was something yet untested. Perhaps it should be. Would Riff’s taste run so? Silk stockings could be had, certainly.

Crehador lounged on his side, propped against one of the pillows. With Cain barefoot, stripped to trousers and shirtsleeves, now they were more at equals (more at; never entirely). Cain was smiling to himself as he undid another button near the top of his shirt and stretched and slid further into the nest of pillows. Crehador caught him at the hip and turned him, rolling him gently onto his back. Cain tumbled willingly, his hands falling open on either side of his face. His mouth opened softly. 

“Flesh,” he said again.

“Flesh,” Crehador echoed, now drawing himself up to kneel over him.

Cain was still in that moment, save for his eyes. Crehador cupped his face in one hand, tracing temple and cheekbone, pulling gently at Cain’s lips with his thumb; a glimpse of white teeth. Now he could feel his warmth, the blood in his face. Cain’s mouth opened again, a sharp breath, and Crehador lunged with another fierce kiss. There is something of the cannibal in this kind of wild desire, wild consumption. Hands and their grasp, lips and tongue, teeth, a brief frenzy, a will to take. Cain was just as hungry, clutching at his shoulders, pulling at the neck of his tunic. Crehador pulled at Cain’s jaw again, pushing in his tongue, seeking an opening, seeking heat. Cain answered alike, seeking bitterness and anise and sugar. They tasted, they moved together, they crept deeper into this hiding place.

Crehador broke the kiss first, pulling away slowly. Cain reached at first to try and catch his mouth again--to no use. Crehador looked down at Cain with half-closed eyes.

“You don’t taste half as bitter with poison as I thought.”

Cain gave him a crooked half-smile. “Did you think I was like Rappacini’s daughter and made poisonous by affiliation?” 

But there was some truth in that, if darkly: there was poison in him, but not the kind that could be so easily bottled as aconite, atropine--or even wormwood, stripped of most of its poison for that absinthe on the table. No, his poison was in his blood, in his family, and in his shadow--more at the fabled upas tree, with its venom said to be carried on the very wind and only criminals sent to collect its poison. 

Cain passed his fingers over his mouth. “You taste of absinthe.”

“You saw me take two doses.”

“For courage?”

“For the  _ pleasure _ of it.” He turned aside for a moment. “You are insufferable.”

“Kiss me again. It should keep me quiet.”

And he did, deep again at first, as Cain, with clever tongue and clever teeth, caught his lower lip and nipped it. Crehador had laced his fingers with Cain’s at first, pressing locked hands, pinning him down and Cain’s back had arched, rising, nearly touching, chest to chest. His hands let loose and he slid them down Cain’s shirt. Cain, for his part, now had his freed hands set in Crehador’s hair just behind his ears. Faintly, faintly, he was scratching at the skin of his scalp with his nails--enough to bring about a shiver, certainly. They slowed for a moment, Crehador now undoing the buttons down Cain’s shirt, slowly, slowly, one at a time. Cain slipped free from the kiss.

“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,” he whispered slowly, almost sleepy. “Rich man, poor man, beggar man--” and now he drew close to Crehador’s face again, waiting, breathing, the taste of Crehador’s mouth in his. 

“Thief,” Cain said, kissing him again.

Now Crehador smiled--this troublesome lordling. Cain pushed himself up one one elbow, nearly sitting again. Crehador found, at last, the skin of his chest, the soft hollow of his throat, with his hands. Cain shuddered again and his breath caught for a moment. Deep kisses became messy, broken, useless things, where each smiled wickedly at the other for a moment in between, in the pause to catch a breath.

Twisted together, they made their way each down the other’s neck, all teeth and lips and tongue, and sometimes only breath, seeking the scent of skin and hair. Crehador found the black earring Cain wore always in his left ear and he took the earring and the earlobe both between his teeth, sucked at them, and twisted the earring with his tongue. Cain writhed against him for it, taking more than a bite at the curve between Crehador’s neck and his shoulder to keep back a moan. Crehador hissed, sighed, panted a moment. 

“I hope you’ll leave a mark,” he whispered into Cain’s ear. “I should like to have to explain it.”

“Consider it,” Cain said, still over his shoulder, “my sign and seal, proof that I have paid my debt to you.”

Crehador slipped his hands around Cain’s back (mercifully, mercifully over his shirt; could he know? perhaps he knew? from that awful touch to his mind before, perhaps he knew) and laid him down again. “But, my lord, you haven’t yet paid.”

“Take this off,” Cain said, ignoring him and tugging at the hem of Crehador’s tunic like a petulant child.

“As my lord wishes.” 

He pulled at the back of the collar, sliding it up, over, and off. He shook out his hair and tossed the tunic aside.

“It’s quite to your style, isn’t it?” Cain said, looking at the rumpled, striped pile of it. “Where did you come across that thing?”

Crehador shrugged, nonchalant. “Bombay, Marrakesh, someplace like that.”

“More like you collected it from the floor of an opium den.”

“I’ve better taste than that,” he scoffed.

Cain settled back on his elbows and sighed a little. “I could argue  _ that  _ with you endlessly. But, as you said: ‘one simply must dress the part.’ I suppose you do.”

“Are you always like this?”

“Insufferable?” Cain said.

“Infuriating. And in the midst of--”

“A seduction? An afternoon tryst?” Cain lay back again and gave Crehador a low, sidelong glance. His eyes shone in the dim and heated light. “I think I am, yes.”

There was something fascinating in the way a man desired--a woman, another man, anything; but especially another man. There was the hesitation, the curiosity, vague familiarity, overwhelming want, the silent confession that one might be so Unspeakable. Cain had seen it for a little while before he had recognized it for what it was--glances given across ballrooms, a certain smile across the table, a different manner and mode than when one flirted with a woman. These were some of the first signs. And he knew the inner stirrings himself--at least some.

That strange agony, for instance, when Riff wore his black gloves and there was only a glimpse of the skin of his wrists to be seen between glove and sleeve. Or the shape of his shoulders when he bent to clear the tea things away. Or the sound of his voice when he whispered. Or, best beloved always, the scent of his shirt. 

But were these the same as the almost-indiscreet glances cast across ballrooms or tables? Perhaps they were and perhaps they were not. (No, they were not.)

But, still: it was different, it was fascinating. And so he watched: the rise and fall of Crehador’s bare chest, the tension across his shoulders, the tremor down at his stomach, the set of his mouth and jaw--and, of course, his eyes. Therein lay all the signs of desire and want, so clearly. And it was still novel to be the object of such desire as  _ this _ , to know what it was to be desired in  _ this _ way. And he knew he looked desirable in the darkness of that corner: pale skin, dark hair scattered across cushion and rug, bright cat’s eyes, one hand curled near his lips, just wanton enough to provoke ideas, just vulnerable enough to present possibilities, just dangerous enough to give one pause. Feline, languid, he rolled his shoulders against the rug under him.

Crehador set one hand against Cain’s knee. Cain looked at it, then back at his eyes. They both knew the next steps in this dance, the next moves in this game. Gently and slowly, he pushed at his knee, drawing Cain’s legs open. Cain held his gaze. Crehador set his own knee between Cain’s legs and leaned over him again.

He began with his mouth: Cain rose to meet the kiss--long enough to enjoy but not nearly long enough. Cain’s hands trailed over his shoulders, his nails dragged along the skin of his arms (a threat? a promise?). Crehador broke the kiss--too soon, but then tempted Cain with another, leaning closer and closer, only to move instead for Cain’s throat: he trailed lips and tongue down the soft skin under his jaw, the line of his neck, the hollow of his throat (a quick touch of his tongue in that hollow). And then his chest: the sharpness of each collarbone, a gentle bite for each one; his breastbone (rising and falling with deep breaths, his heart beating away like a bird in a cage), the soft and vulnerable place below it.

“This,” Crehador said, kissing, then pressing with his index finger, “Is called the solar plexus. Behind it lies Manipura, the third chakra. It is tied to the spine and fire. And, to some, to the sephirot of Hod and Netzach.”

Cain rolled his eyes. “You’re nearly as insufferable as I am.”

“I’ve told you before that if you want to defeat your enemies, you must learn to think like them.”

“I’ve no--” but he was cut short when Crehador pressed both thumbs into that tender point in his ribs, making Cain groan and tense, and Crehador grinned.

“You ought to listen to me more often,” he said, sliding his lips and the tip of his nose down Cain’s stomach--every muscle there clenching and trembling, barely loosening enough to let him breathe. Indeed, every muscle in the whole of his body seemed as taut. Crehador dipped his tongue into the cup of Cain’s navel, rose from it, and pressed one long finger in, almost seeking some kind of entry, and Cain writhed, delighted.

Crehador paused, trailing his hands down, and slipped that finger in the band of Cain’s trousers. “You must realize we are come to it now,” he said softly and smiling.

“We are,” Cain answered, smiling in return.

Each button made a quiet, sharp sound--a raindrop, a plucked string--as it was undone. Crehador smoothed his hands across that newfound skin. Cain raised his hips and Crehador pulled away his trousers and undergarments and tossed them somewhere near his waistcoat, somewhere near his tie.

The room was warm; the air still felt cool against his skin. Cain closed his eyes. Now Crehador was letting one finger glide over the bones in Cain’s hips, the twitching muscles in the tops of his legs. He was looking at him, lying there, spread like an etherized patient, a corpse at its murder, or a sacrifice upon an altar. What is the perpetual link between desire and death? Cain opened his eyes. Crehador was still crouched between his open legs. He ran his long, subtle magician’s fingers along the insides of Cain’s thighs.

“You could tell me the things you want. Perhaps I’ll listen. Perhaps I’ll do as you ask.”

Cain closed his eyes again and answered: “There is nothing I could want you to do that Riff hasn’t already done.”

“Is he going to haunt this entire afternoon?”

Cain smiled and the smile turned to a laugh. “Yes.”

Crehador crept up the length of Cain’s body again, his knees still between Cain’s knees, keeping his legs apart, keeping him trapped. Cain rose up to his elbows again to meet him, face to face, still smiling. Crehador studied him a moment.

“That earring you wear--”

“I had Riff put it in. Or didn’t you already know that?”

Crehador said nothing. Rather, he dove again for Cain’s throat, catching him just below his left ear, then creeping, bit by bit, back up to that earring. Cain let his head fall gently back, showing his throat, willing. Certainly, Riff had done much the same to him, kissing at his neck, toying with his earring, taking it gently in his teeth. Perhaps the pleasure was diminished some under less familiar lips, but it was pleasant yet. Crehador caught his earring with his tongue (nearly as subtle as his hands, truth be told) and gave it a turn. Another shiver passed over Cain, head to foot.

“That does seem to delight you,” Crehador said, now taking the lobe of his ear in his teeth.

Cain said nothing, even as Crehador explored the back of his earring, pushing the post up and back, through his skin. Now he pulled at it and when Cain tried to pull away, he set his teeth harder. One hand drifted to Cain’s bare hip, the other to the back of his head. Another deft twist of Cain’s earring with Crehador’s tongue and another shudder passed through him. Crehador paused for a moment, long enough to move back down to Cain’s neck and Cain twisted away, such as he could. His legs still spread and pinned, he could only twist so far, but he brought himself around to lie more on his stomach and less on his back. He was flushed and panting, staring hard.

“Stop that.” 

Crehador, though, had one arm already around his waist, the other around his chest, gathering him to him, Cain’s back (the shirt, let it stay between--) firm against Crehador’s chest. Cain untangled his legs and tried to kneel; Crehador allowed it, though he was still hard against the nape of Cain’s neck. The hand at Cain’s waist was moving, beginning to drift lower.

A touch across, one to each and then between the bones of his hips. Long fingers, like spiders spinning, sliding down the pale skin of his inner thighs and creeping up again. Cain found himself looking up the inner length of the curtains until his eyes fell closed again. That roaming hand touched nothing, felt nothing, held nothing as it moved again away and between, smoothing the skin of his legs, smoothing the skin of his stomach. And then, at last, it gripped his cock--nothing more: a grip, a hold.

Cain, held up by hands, knees, and perhaps that arm around his chest, gave a shuddering breath. Crehador smiled into the nape of Cain’s neck; Cain could feel him grinning there.

Crehador nosed his way around Cain’s shirt collar and bit harder at the back, the turning side of Cain’s neck. Against Cain’s skin he whispered, “I hope I do leave a mark.”

“You keep at my neck,” Cain said between heaving breaths. “There is something of the vampire in you after all.”

No response. His hand (still not moving, still only a hold) still on Cain’s cock (firm, and well enough), Crehador lifted and leaned and brought them both back against the mountain of pillows. Cain was sprawled in his lap, his head lolling in the hollow of Crehador’s bare shoulder.

One long, gentle stroke at his cock and Cain’s eyes fell closed. Another and he smiled. Another and he nearly sighed. Crehador ran his thumb across the tip of his cock and Cain pressed his heels into the rug beneath them. Another slow series of strokes,  _ adagio _ , and Crehador found his rhythm. Cain’s breath came in time with it. His mouth dropped open again and Crehador brought his finger’s to Cain’s lips, touching softly, tracing his mouth. 

One finger, another, pressed into Cain’s mouth. Cain caught his breath in surprise.

“Don’t bite.”

Those long fingers, magician’s fingers with all their fondness for cards and coins, in his mouth, touching teeth and velvety tongue, touching his lips, with Crehador’s thumb stroking softly the side of his face--it left him bleary and helpless, gripping at Crehador’s trousers. He did not bite, though he did lay his teeth against Crehador’s fingers once or twice. Could he be blamed? Surely not, not with the twisting way Crehador’s hand wound around between his legs: a stroke, a touch, a firmer stroke, his thumb winding around the head of his cock again, now  _ staccato _ , now a broken rhythm, now another long stroke.

“The way you writhe about, I might think you were possessed, if I didn’t know better.”

Now Cain did bite at Crehador’s fingers. Crehador’s other hand, down between his legs, stopped its long strokes in an instant. Cain dropped his head against Crehador’s shoulder and gave him a cutting look.

“I told you: don’t bite. This is the penalty. Now, will you behave?”

Cain huffed a sigh, but was still, his teeth well away from the fingers in his mouth. He gave Crehador a pathetic, almost sorrowful look--the penitent, all apologies.

“I know you will, for now you know the penalty.” He drew his fingers out of Cain’s mouth, but stroked his lips with the tip of his thumb. “You are at my mercy. But the truth is--” he gave Cain’s cock another firm stroke and a tug. “--you have always been at my mercy.” Another stroke. “I could have lied to you so many times.” At each word, he gave another stroke. Then: a flurry of them, leaving Cain panting, every muscle in his legs pulled tight.

And again Crehador paused, whispering warm into Cain’s ear: “I wish I could show you some of the things I’ve seen in the sordid quarters of this city. I wonder if you would like them.” And he twisted his fingers up the length of Cain’s cock.

Cain, catching his breath, answered, “I’ve seen some on my own already.”

“But not the true depths, I don’t think. And perhaps,” he went on, twirling his fingers in elaborate patterns, the sort for balancing coins or dice or cards, all along Cain’s cock, “I mean that I would like to see you in those places.”

And for a moment, Cain seemed to have a vision of these heated rooms, glowing with rosy light, and bodies contorted with desire. He seemed to see garters and silk stockings and the high buttoned boots Crehador wanted and black velvet gloves--and nothing else. But at the moment he nearly fell headlong into this vision, he remembered sleeping next to Riff (such a rare thing, something done only with the greatest secrecy) on cold nights: the sound of his breath, his weight in the bed next to him, his warmth, and his hands (small kisses left at the nape of Cain’s neck).

And suddenly Cain cried out, softly, feeling himself rising towards climax.

“No you don’t,” Crehador said, and Cain glared at him with gritted teeth.

“You are spoilt,” Crehador said. “You expect your way every time.” With a magician’s flourish, he produced a silk handkerchief from the hip pocket of his trousers. “I’ll not have you spoiling my things with your careless pleasure.”

He wrapped Cain’s cock in the handkerchief, but still rolled the silk across his skin--a softer pleasure, and a warmer one. 

Cain was rocking his hips against Crehador’s hand, bringing himself on closer to release, thinking not of Crehador or the heated red rooms he had imagined, but of Riff and his long fingers and soft smile and how they would breathe together and the look of beautiful abandon on his face when Cain brought him pleasure and wanting and finally to his own release.

Cain’s back arched and he came, Crehador holding him fast in the handkerchief and smiling wickedly.

He slumped against Crehador at last, still breathing hard. Crehador tossed aside the soiled handkerchief. “I’ve wondered, you know, for some time how you would look at that moment.”

Still panting, Cain pulled himself up and away and out of Crehador’s lap, dropping against the cushions on the far side of the shabby silk tent.

Crehador regarded him with a cold stare for a long moment. “I should take you here and now as you are.”

And Cain turned to him from where he lay on the cushions: “Why didn’t you before?”

“I could have,” Crehador said, tossing his head. “I could have taken what was owed to me between those two doses of absinthe and sent you on your way back to your favorite servant, raw and wretched. But no.” He leaned forward. “That would be unseemly. To you, I give a kindness to make you generous in your payment to me.”

And Cain laughed. 

But Crehador insisted: “I want you to offer your payment to me. Come here.”

Very well then. Cain rolled languidly off the cushions and onto his hands and knees, feline, bored. If it was to be a game, it should be played well. On hands and knees he crept towards Crehador, eyes burning and mouth soft.

Crehador leaned back among the cushions and watched (he would have seemed more himself with an opium pipe or a cigarette or a glass in his hand). Cain, by turns shy and sly, slipped his hand around Crehador’s bare waist, up his back, around to his chest. Now they were face to face again, Cain kneeling astride one of Crehador’s knees. He turned his eyes soft and whispered into Crehador’s ear: “I’m so grateful, so incredibly grateful for all that you’ve done for  me.” 

Crehador laughed, but still reached over to take Cain’s chin in his hand. “You’re a fair actor.”

With soft lips Cain asked, “How can I ever repay you for all you’ve done for me?”

“I like you like this,” Crehador answered and sighed. “I think you know how to repay me.”

Cain smiled and leaned to kiss him, and to bite at his lip and hold him there for a moment, all while his hands traced the planes of his chest and stomach and found the buttons of his trousers. He began to pull them down; Crehador obliged him, raising his hips (of course he’d wear no undergarments; no surprise there). Soon, between the two of them, they’d shuffled off his trousers and tossed them aside.

Now, from down between Crehador’s bare legs, Cain smiled up at him and spread his legs a little farther apart. Crehador settled his shoulders a little deeper into the pillows behind him.

Though watching Crehador’s face the whole while, Cain at last reached between his legs and took hold of his cock (already firming up; not a small, shy thing at all) and gave it a good pull. Crehador dropped his head back against the pillows and Cain gave him another good pull.

But only two: he had other ideas. Crehador raised his head for a moment, only to watch, as Cain brought his own legs together and, crawling towards another embrace, set Crehador’s cock between his thighs and held it there, tight, and Crehador groaned.

When he raised his head again, Cain caught his eyes and held his gaze. Slowly he began to roll his hips, sliding Crehador’s cock between his thighs, squeezing and gripping it all the while. Crehador dropped his head back down again and raised one hand to his forehead. His breath came harder and deeper.

“Where did the young Lord Hargreaves learn such a thing, I wonder?” he asked, in between heaving breaths.

His hips still rocking, Cain answered, smiling, “You aren’t the only one with one foot in the  _ demimonde _ , Crehador.”

“Then I wonder about the quarters in which you’re wandering.” And he reached for a grip on Cain’s shoulders first, then his hips. But after a moment, he seemed to sour and laid back again. He took his cock back and, wearing almost a pout, he said, “My lord, you can do better than this.”

For his part, Cain was wearing a wicked smile; his face was flushed with the effort of a moment before. “You demanded your payment in flesh. Take what flesh is given to you.”

But Crehador flashed a scowl. “You’re in no position to bargain with--”

“The game,” Cain said, sitting back on his heels, “in  _ The Merchant of Venice _ was to take a pound of flesh without spilling blood. You never said what flesh you demanded; so I’ve decided, and you shall take what is given to you and be grateful.”

“You aristocrats are all alike.”

“Then offer me something that would make me change my mind.”

“You forget that this is your bodily payment for my bodily risk.”

“Yes, but I could be more generous with my payment.” Cain tapped his fingers against Crehador’s chest. “In gratitude, I could offer you more than you ask.”

“I have offered,” Crehador said, sliding close to Cain’s neck and ear again, “Quite enough already, I think.”

“Do you?”

Crehador slipped two fingers across Cain’s cheek, his lips, and then into his mouth. “Give me what I want,” he whispered.

Cain took hold of Crehador’s wrist and pulled the fingers from his mouth. With hard eyes and all a lord’s command: “Open your legs wider.”

And Crehador obeyed.

Cain took his time, mapping his path with fingertips, lips, tongue, the tip of his nose, descending back down between Crehador’s legs, tracing tracks between muscles, stirring coarse hair. But even when he came, at last, back to his cock, Cain dodged it and went instead down the inside of one thigh, then the other. There was some novel of debauchers and their tortures that had them whipping the insides of the thighs of their captives to bring on a particular kind of pain; Cain would argue against the method but one could hardly argue how truly sensitive this skin was. And he nipped at it, gently, to see a red mark rise up and to hear Crehador gasp, then sigh.

It was still a game of demand and control, even now--especially now as Cain spread Crehador’s legs still a little wider, then up to fold them at the knee, to have him laid out as Cain would like, not as Crehador would like.

From here, below and between his knees, Crehador seemed almost vulnerable, almost helpless, a magician stripped of everything including his power. What could he hide, naked and bared to the air like this? 

But perhaps Crehador felt more a king on his throne, with some conquered lord kneeling here before him, ready to serve him (a thought that made Cain’s skin crawl).

“You’re in quite a delicate situation, Crehador. Be careful not to touch me as you did at the Cromwell house or I might bite off more than your ear.”

Without so much as raising his head, Crehador answered, “You won’t.”

Cain had to give him a wry smile for that, but he was perhaps also owed a punishment--and Cain slapped the inside of his thigh. 

Crehador started and in that instant Cain took the top of his cock into his mouth and drew on it gently. And Crehador settled immediately, his breath hitching twice, then coming on long and slow. 

“I knew it,” Crehador sighed. “You’ve had some practice at this, my lord.”

And he had, though he’d not admit it to the likes of this charlatan. But there were nights when, in secret, he’d lain Riff back on his bed and crept between his legs and toyed with him, teased him, until his was red and wanting. And then (only then) had he taken him in his mouth, held hard at the base of his cock, and tasted him--listening all the while for what made him gasp and moan, and then setting to just that, just what made him gasp and moan and try to keep quiet all while Cain grinned up at him and he threw his arms over his face to try and bear it a little longer and Cain would only go slower, would only want him and the taste of him more.

Crehador didn’t deserve all that much, but the lessons learned could still be put to use: when to grip harder, when to pull, when to only brush the tip of his cock with the tip of his tongue (like lapping up cream, like taking one raspberry from the top of a cake--a feat that could win a lady as easily as a man).

No teeth--clearly, that had been the lesson to learn today--but there was plenty else to do: Cain ran his tongue down the length of the shaft of his cock, licked over the top roughly, drew the whole into his mouth and held it there.

“Cannibalism at its finest,” Crehador murmured over Cain’s bobbing head.

But he could hardly say any more thereafter as Cain took him into his mouth, down into his throat again. And Cain did dare use his teeth--but only for a moment, only to graze the most sensitive places, to make him writhe, to make him desire it as much as hate it. 

His legs started to twitch towards closing and Cain pushed them open again. Crehador had the knuckle of one finger in his teeth to try and hold back a little longer. He was trembling now, even down into his legs and Cain delighted in that. He’d not be long now.

Perhaps some new idea--something to take back to Riff, if it seemed to please this debauched opium-eater--and he rolled his tongue around the curve of the shaft, pulling at it almost as a cat would lick at its fur. And he did seem to like that. But he seemed to like the long draws that pulled from the base of his cock to the tip better: very well, then.

Crehador’s hips bucked once, twice, and some bitter, sour taste came into Cain’s mouth. He frowned. So close, too close. And Cain would not let him have that satisfaction, no matter what his demands. 

With one long, last pull he let free Crehador’s cock, but held to it with his hands while Crehador shook towards climax and shot him an angry look

Cain laughed. “No, neither for me, nor for you,” he said as he snatched up the handkerchief Crehador had used on him and held it against and over Crehador’s cock as his legs shook and his back arched and he finally found his release.

Crehador fell back against his mound of cushions again at last, panting, weak, still shaking as the last waves faded. Cain lay on the carpet with his chin in his hand and smiled.

At length, Crehador spoke: “Don’t smile at me like that. I know what that mouth’s just done.”

Cain tossed the soiled handkerchief at him. “At your bidding, great magician. You ought to be a little grateful.”

“For finally being paid as I am owed?” Crehador said between breaths.

“And was it sufficient payment?”

“For the moment, I think. You may find yourself in my debt again.” He was settling himself against the pillows now, smoothing his hair, catching his breath.

“Perhaps I’ll just pay to have someone pay for me.”

“And could you expect me to accept that? Oh no, Lord Hargreaves.”

Cain sighed. “And I’m told I’m insufferable. You’re unbelievably tiresome. I told you once I didn’t come to trade witticisms.”

“Then why did you...come?”

And Cain could have slapped him.

* * *

They lay for a while, dozing, in the nest of pillows and curtains as the afternoon wore on and lengthened towards evening.

After a time, Crehador rose and fetched up his trousers. Cain watched him as he collected himself, running a hand through his hair, stepping out of the heat trapped within the worn silk curtains, and crossing out into the room again. He took up a silver cigarette case from among the spilt water and absinthe glasses and came back to the corner.

“I’d like you more if you were taller,” Cain said.

“You and your grenadier of a servant.”

Crehador took out a cigarette, tapped it and lit it, waving out the match, and breathing fresh smoke up into the hidden recesses in that tented space.

Cain lay on his back, looking up at the brass censer. “He  _ would  _ look very well in a uniform--the boots especially--and on horseback. I’ve thought that before. I think it’s his shoulders.”

“Soldiers and working-class men,” Crehador sneered, “I should have known.”

“And charlatans, evidently.” Cain said off-hand. He went on: “Riff’s hardly commonplace. Didn’t you know? He was going to be a doctor, save that tragedy and circumstances prevented it. And so he came to me. He understands a refined touch. He is rather broad-shouldered, but it’s quite deceptive.”

“Is my touch so coarse?”

Cain only smiled. “Perhaps I’ll tell him everything you’ve done.”

“And what will he do?”

Cain brought his face close to Crehador’s, almost but not quite no not quite but so very close to a kiss. Their lips brushed when he spoke: “Put me in the bath until I don’t smell like you and your absinthe anymore and kiss me until I forget you.”

“Forget me?”

“He may have to kiss me for quite a long while.”

With the burning cigarette still perched between his fingers, Crehador leaned closer by only a hair’s-breadth and closed the kiss.

Cain broke from it first, smiling, but still close. “If you had wanted to take me to bed, you could have simply asked me.”

Crehador scoffed and drew on his cigarette again. “You would have refused.”

Cain was wearing a crooked, wicked grin. “Do you think so?”

“You do everything else to spite me. You would have refused me to spite me.”

“Perhaps you don’t know me half as well as you think. Perhaps you know what was and not what is.”

And Cain nipped the cigarette for himself and pulled a long drag on it and set it back in Crehador’s mouth. He settled himself again, stretched long on his side, and blew the smoke towards Crehador’s ear. 

Propping his head on his hand he whispered, “If you demand bodily payment for bodily risk again, take me to bed properly. It’s too cramped in this corner.”


End file.
